Google Makes Improvements To Google Analytics
If this headline does not grab your attention, then I just don’t know what else I can say. I know, Google Analytics is only of interest to web marketing nerds, webmasters and people who own e-commerce businesses, right? Well, believe it or not, some of the recent improvements can actually help business owners, marketing managers, and online marketers make good decisions on online marketing strategy quickly and efficiently. The major changes are outlined here: 1. Cross-Device Capabilities. How valuable would the ability to understand how customers may interact with your website from different devices that they own (ie. smartphone v. tablet v. desktop/laptop) and how the interaction and navigation paths may be similar and different. Sounds sort of like A/B testing for cross-device user experience, right? This is the capability offered by the new cross-device tracking offered in Google Analytics. Google will offer an Acquisition Device report initially and will follow up with reports like Device Overlap, Device Paths, and Channels. Our Cross-Device reports only display aggregated and anonymized data from people who have opted into personalized advertising. This new feature will allow you to understand how research may be done via mobile devices, but further interaction is via desktop, or that customers have patterns in how they access your site (ie. desktop during weekdays, mobile devices on evenings and weekends) which will help to customize marketing efforts and create appealing calls to action for mobile pages. To activate the new Cross-Device features, start by visiting the Admin section of your Analytics account and choose the setting to activate Google signals. (If you don’t see this setting, be patient, we will roll out to all Analytics accounts over the coming weeks.) No updated website code or website alterations are necessary. 2. Google Marketing Platform (a.k.a. Google Marketing Platform) The capabilities of this new platform are admittedly beyond the small business owner, but for marketing managers who manage multiple advertising channels and platforms, the Google 360 platform offers the ability to manage multiple channels. Search Ads 360 offers the ability to manage search ads across platforms like Google Ads, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, and more. This will save time as anyone who has spent time moving across these platforms manually will tell you, or save money for those who have felt the need to spend money to centralize dashboard control using platforms like Wordstream. Display & Video 360 allows one-stop management of display and video campaigns, bids, creatives, and audiences. Other new Google Analytics features, along with their capabilities, include Analytics 360 to help to understand how users engage with your business. Optimize 360 allows users to run experiments and personalize content, Tag Manager 360 can help to manage web and app tags from a single interface. The 360 Products require an investment, and again, are designed primarily for large data users, but the find out more, you can explore set up options with a Google Sales Representative. Google has also added a list of strategic data partners to interface with Google Analytics. Not all of the strategic partners are new, but Google is definitely making an effort to interact with the rest of the world instead of “hogging” data. This will allow a more efficient management of search and data information and collection for online marketers. Any business with a significant online ad budget should at least explore these new tools and how useful they may be in creating a better focus for online advertising.